My Reading Running and Recipe spot, plus a Ten of the Best on the occasional weekend.

Monday, 15 June 2015

Home made rolls

These are so much nicer when you bake them. And you can. I am the world's worst baker, so if I can, you can too!
4 cups white bread flour (cake flour also works)
1 packet instant yeast (10g)
1 tablespoon honey
Dash of salt (or lo-Salt, if you have it)
1 tablespoon malt powder (if you don’t know what on earth this is, substitute molasses, or treacly syrup, or just add a little more honey)
1 egg
1 eggwhite
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 and a quarter cups water, tepid.

These are baked by me - promise. I sprinkled sesame seeds to look professional

Combine 3 cups of the flour and the other dry ingredients in a missing bowl. I use a stand mixer, with a dough hook but I have made these using my sister’s hand held mixer. The dough is quite sticky, so I haven’t tried to knead by hand. If you do, make the kneading for ten minutes.

Mix in the water, honey, eggs and oil. Knead in mixer for 5-7 minutes, adding rest of flour slowly. The dough should form a fairly manageable large ball. If it looks stringy, and isn’t coming away from the sides of the bowl, keep adding flour.

Cover with glad wrap, and a tea towel, dampened with warm water. It will double in size in about 40 minutes.This is the fun part. Take a portion (you are going to make about 12 rolls, small, in total, so if you want to be accurate, divide the dough up into half, half again and then each ball into three – voila!) with hands that are lightly floured. Press ball into a flat rough square on a lightly floured surface, then fold corner to corner to form a triangle. Start at the one corner and roll towards the other, stretching the dough as you roll. Place your rolls on a baking sheet/greased oven tray.

Cover with loose plastic. I take a large freezer bag, and cut it open, so that it is large enough to lightly cover the rolls as they rise. They need another 40 minutes to rise.

Pre-heat your oven as hot as it will go. You get better rolls (lighter and fluffier) if you can create as much steam as you can when you put them into the oven. Here’s what I do, when the rolls have risen and are ready for the oven. Spray the rolls with water (or sprinkle them, or use an olive oil spray – also works).

Open the oven door and quickly put the rolls in. Then take a small jug of boiling water and pour as much as you can into the bottom of the oven tray (not the one the rolls are on, the one in the oven that the baking tray stands on). I throw in the damp tea towel next to the rolls for extra steam. All this as quickly as you can. If you have another “steam method” use it. It’s getting as much steam into the oven at an early stage of baking that is important.

If the rolling and the steaming seems too much for you, don’t worry – this is optional. The rolls will be great without it. You can just make round rolls – balls work too!